


Letter received by Raven Darkholme on March 9, 2010

by Alara J Rogers (AlaraJRogers)



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/F, Gay Marriage, love letters from beyond the grave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-13
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 16:25:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/433142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlaraJRogers/pseuds/Alara%20J%20Rogers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On March 9, 2010, Raven Darkholme, aka the mutant terrorist Mystique, receives the following letter.</p><p>On March 9, 2010, the District of Columbia, where Raven and her lover Irene Adler lived many years until Irene's death fighting the mutant Legion, began performing legal gay marriages.</p><p>Irene knew it was coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letter received by Raven Darkholme on March 9, 2010

If you're reading this, now, then I'm no longer alive. I'm pointing out the obvious because when I am, it isn't quite so obvious yet. I still see pathways to the future, slender threads we might be able to follow that would allow me to be there with you on this day. But there are fewer of them all the time.

It's an inevitable truth that you do not age as the humans do, my dear, and I… do. I see such a long, long life ahead for you, and it fills me with joy to know you'll be on this Earth so long, and sorrow that so many of those years will be filled with pain… and grief because I know I cannot possibly share all those years with you. I'm an old woman. I've lived a long and happy life, and I could be content with that… but I don't want to leave you to face those years alone.

And I don't want to leave you alone on this day. But I'm writing you this letter because I believe that I probably will. Our lawyer will mail it to you, or hand deliver it… or in the very worst case scenario pass it to our daughter, or to one of her more legitimate friends to pass it on to her, on your behalf. I cannot believe that Rogue would refuse to bring you this letter no matter what passes between you… and I have seen so many terrible things that may pass between you, but I know that she will always love you, and you will always love her, and neither of you would deny each other this.

I shouldn't even write this. I see you crying, Raven. I don't want to hurt you; I don't want to re-awaken old grief. As selfishly as I want to know you will love me years after my passing, I also want to know you will move on, you'll be happy again. I shouldn't write this letter and make you cry.

But I've seen the date, and I cannot bear not to say this.

Raven Darkholme, if I were there with you today, I would marry you.

I would give to you my mother's wedding ring, and you would transform it into an object on your belt so no one would know what it was, and you would take it out at night and turn it back into a ring. You would cry, because you have no family heirlooms to give me, and then you would take a lock of your hair and hold it in your hands and concentrate and transform it into a gold band, and you would give it to me. And because of the strength of your will, it would stay a gold band. Most of the time.

When occasionally it turns back into hair, I would bring it back to you to make me a new one.

We would stand in a very, very long line, all the women and men of the District who've been denied the chance to declare their love through the law in front of us and behind us. I will tell happy couples that I am a mutant who can see the future, and that their future will be bright and joyous. I will say so even when it's not true, because why ruin their day? And they will have fought so hard and long for this right and be so happy to have it that on this day, this day of all days, they won't care that I say I'm a mutant. All they will care about is that I am an old woman who loves another old woman, and today we will be married at last.

And when we stand before the justice of the peace, we will sign our real names and you will wear your real form, blue and proud in a beautiful white wedding gown. Some people will scream, because Mystique is a well-known mutant terrorist, but I will take your hand and shout at them that today we're just gay people like they are and we only want to get married, human or mutant, everyone wants to marry their love and why shouldn't we? And the justice of the peace will decide that the best thing for her to do is ignore the fact that a known mutant terrorist is standing in front of her, because there are so many people who will get hurt if there's a battle, and she doesn't want to risk denying any couple their day even if it were possible to take us from here quietly, which she suspects it is not.

I don't know who would be our witness. Rogue, if it were possible. St. John, but I think he will be dead. Dominic or Fred, perhaps. Val Cooper is even a possibility. So is Forge.

There is actually one line where Magneto is there. It's the one where he's our son in law. Don't laugh, you knew it was a possibility.

There is another where it's Scott Summers, of all people, because he's taking the opportunity to make the statement that mutants, even mutant terrorists, are people too, people who love each other just as everyone else in the line does. And there is one where it's Ororo Munroe.

It doesn't matter because you know that it will not happen. Because you're only going to receive this letter if I'm dead, and while gay marriage is now legal in the District, both parties do still need to be alive. So I can't marry you, my love. I'm so sorry.

But if I were alive, today I would be Mrs. Raven Darkholme and you would be Mrs. Irene Adler (a custom that is ridiculous when men and women do it, and twice as ridiculous when it's people of the same sex). Perhaps I would even change my name to Darkholme. Not because I would change my name simply because I'm a woman getting married, but because you created Darkholme to be your name, personally, and it was no one's before it was yours… whereas Adler was the name of all my human family before me, and I would want to say that I am of your family only, that I belong to you and only you. Besides, Irene Darkholme actually sounds kind of nifty.

Stop crying, Raven. I'm sorry. I don't mean to make you grieve again. But I know you were thinking of me today. I know you would want to marry me today, if you could. I want you to know I want the same thing. I couldn't care less about humans and their stupid laws most of the time, and yet, I want a piece of paper that tells the whole world I am your wife. Isn't that stupid? I halfway suspect that we'd head off for our honeymoon and get attacked by the Avengers (since the X-Men are not going to go after the mothers of one of their core members on their wedding day, but the Avengers don't care)… but it's my fantasy, not a true future, so I'm going to imagine that we take off for Fiji and no one stops us and we spend every day for a month making scandalous love to each other in a beach cottage (but not actually on the beach, because sand in one's parts is not really romantic.) And I'll lie in the sun every day and actually get a tan, and have no worries about skin cancer because I'm still an old woman and my skin has bigger problems than a tan on my honeymoon. And no one in Fiji cares that you're blue, because we're rich Americans with money.

Now I'm crying.

Oh, Raven. I'm so sorry. I don't fear death, I never have… but I want this to happen for us, and I feel such grief that it won't. In real life, here we are in DC pretending to be the humans' lap dogs, taking orders from Val, and I know it won't last, and we have six marriage licenses under six different names of yours and they all claim you're a man and that your race is "white", not "mutant", and I know you took them only for convenience and it burns you inside that none of them are real. It burns me, too.

I will not tell you, in the now that I am, that this will happen someday. You're so used to the idea that it cannot that it doesn't even hurt you much. It won't start to hurt until they win in Massachusetts, and you'll start to think "If only Irene and I… if only Irene had lived…" and today, today this is our home and we could finally marry, if I were alive. Today it will hurt you. I'm sorry, I don't want to add to your pain.

But I want you to know I knew this would happen. And I want you to know that I will always love you. And I want you to know that if I could travel to the future in more than a vision, if I could live to be there with you today, I would marry you, Raven, I would marry you and be your wife forever.

With all love,

Irene Adler

Destiny


End file.
